On 12 April 2013 Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam posted on Amnesty‘s Livewire an interesting account of his meeting with the just liberated Cambodian Human Rights Defender Mam Sonando. It is a impressive testimony to the resilience of human rights defenders and how campaigning can help them and therefore I reproduce it below:
It was hot – very hot – as I arrived last week at Mam Sonando’s home and radio station on a dusty street in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. He welcomed me at the front door. “Thank you,” he said. With a broad smile, he flashed his signature ‘V for victory’ sign with his right hand. After over eight months in prison, he was free and no longer facing 20 years behind bars.
Mam Sonando, 72, is a well-known and popular journalist. He owns Beehive Radio, one of Cambodia’s few independent radio stations. And he heads the Association of Democrats, which promotes human rights and democracy and helps poor communities. On 11 September 2012, his trial began at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. He had been arrested two months earlier after Cambodia’s Prime Minister accused him publicly of being behind a plot for a village in eastern Cambodia to secede – to break away from the country. In fact, the villagers there had been involved in a long-running land conflict with a powerful company, and the so-called secession plot was used as a pretext to forcibly evict them. Read the rest of this entry »
As a student activist speaking out against the government, Hassan is at constant threat of being arrested. The Sudanese government tracks and harasses members of the student movement he belongs to. Reports of his friends and contacts being detained, tortured and even killed by the authorities are frighteningly regular. But Hassan’s network is also well organized. His phone is always on him and he uses it to help organize demonstrations, to record and disseminate video of violent crackdowns against the students and to keep his network updated every minute – a network that stretches from Khartoum to the rest of the globe in the time it takes to send a tweet. If he is able to get word out that he’s been arrested, Hassan knows that his network’s response will be swift and structured. The problem is that he knows the first thing the authorities will seize is his mobile phone. And here’s the double danger of not getting word out: the authorities will use the phone book, call log, messages and any open apps – such as G-Mail or Facebook – to identify and track others. Without knowledge of the arrest, the whole network will be easily compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
Voluntary work in one of the world’s leading human rights organisations can provide valuable experience and is a great opportunity to contribute to the international human rights movement. The voluntary work is unpaid, although travel and lunch expenses are provided. Amnesty International can also act as a sponsor to enable you to arrange your own right to be in the UK as a volunteer. Please note that volunteering does not lead directly to employment with Amnesty International.
The volunteers will work in the ‘Individuals at Risk’ team to ensure the development and coordination of a strategic, sustainable body of casework for effective action. The volunteers will work directly with the Individuals at Risk Research and Policy Advisor, under whose supervision the volunteers will contribute to work on human rights defenders protection, with a specific focus on women human rights defenders, as well as work related to relationship management and ethics policy of human rights engagement. The deadline is 17 April.
For years Angélica Bello, a human rights defender from Colombia, rarely spent a day alone – that would have been, simply, too dangerous. A number of threats against her because of her job helping the many survivors of sexual violence – women caught up in Colombia’s long-running armed conflict – meant that it was too dangerous for the 45-year-old mother of four to travel alone. In 2000, two of her daughters were kidnapped and kept as sexual slaves by paramilitaries, and were only released after Angélica personally intervened. Read the rest of this entry »
Liu Xia, the wife of Liu Xiaobo has been illegally held under house arrest for over 26 months. She has not been able to communicate with others or leave her apartment freely.
On the 28 December 2012 a group of activists attracted Liu Xia’s attention outside her apartment beneath her window. They discussed how to get around the security guards through the side door. Liu Xia welcomed them with hugs and tears.
The meeting was brief, just three minutes as they wanted to avoid conflict with the security guards whose backup team would rush in soon. Some friends kept talking with Liu Xia through the windows and Liu Xia threw out some chocolates to them to express her thanks. Some were arguing with the security guards, explaining that they were just Liu Xia’s friends to celebrate Liu Xiaobo’s birthday with Liu Xia.
Eventually, all the friends managed to return home safely. Amnesty International has translated the video about their visit into English. The original can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJumioueaAo
Amnesty International shows its ‘new’ broadened mandate with this short video on forced evictions in Africa. In 4 languages on YouTube: video by AI on forced evictions in Africa. It highlights the kind of human rights violations that the 2012 nominee of the MEA in Cambodia is dealing with: see short film on the multimedia monk on http://www.martinennalsaward.org
Under the title “A Diminished Force for Good” Tom Parker of USA AI posted on 21 March 2012 a piece that – in a frank way – argues that the US should act with regard to its own human rights problems in order to regain international influence. It takes the lead role of the US in getting a resolution on Sri Lanka (successfully) passed in the Human Rights Council in Geneva this week and contrasts it with how the US has dealt with human rights abuses in its own ambit.
As Amnesty’s recent report Locked Away: Sri Lanka’s security detaineesmakes clear, human rights abuses still continue to this day in Sri Lanka. Instances of arbitrary and illegal detention have been widely reported, as have acts of torture and extrajudicial execution. Tom Parker says “I know from my own personal experience of working with Sri Lankan human rights defenders that the climate of fear in which opponents of the Rajapaksa regime operate is all-pervasive. The situation in Sri Lanka is grave and the intervention of the United Nations is much needed. .However, welcome though the US-sponsored resolution is, it is greatly undermined by the embarrassing gap that exists between US rhetoric and US behavior. Critics have not been slow in pointing this out.”…”The complete failure of the United States to address the deliberate use of torture as an integral part of the War on Terror hugely diminishes its ability to put pressure on other states to adhere to human rights standards that it itself has ignored. And we are all the poorer for it.”
“The alacrity with which the US Army has responded to the tragic deaths of sixteen Afghan villagers in Zangabad, Afghanistan, earlier this month demonstrates that accountability is nothing to be afraid of. Indeed it can be a powerful force for good….. The US is one of the [governments that actively promote human rights] but its influence has been greatly diminished over the past decade because of its reluctance to meaningfully address its own, very public, failings in this regard….We need a strong US voice speaking out for human rights in the world, but that can’t happen without real accountability at home.”
For years Angélica Bello, a human rights defender from Colombia, rarely spent a day alone – that would have been, simply, too dangerous. A number of threats against her because of her job helping the many survivors of sexual violence – women caught up in Colombia’s long-running armed conflict – meant that it was too dangerous for the 45-year-old mother of four to travel alone. In 2000, two of her daughters were kidnapped and kept as sexual slaves by paramilitaries, and were only released after Angélica personally intervened. 
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 